Aging Headbangers Escape Nursing Home To Hit Heavy Metal Festival

Managers of a German nursing home began to panic when they couldn’t find a pair of elderly friends anywhere on the grounds. Police later discovered the men “disoriented and dazed”— at a heavy metal festival.

The unidentified pals left the home in the rural Dithmarschen district and likely hitchhiked and took public transit to travel 25 miles to the Wacken Open Air festival near Hamburg. The headbangers’ event is touted as the biggest metal festival in the world.

The two men, nabbed before dawn Saturday, were disappointed to miss the last day of the festival, which began Thursday. But they were sent back to the home in a taxi — escorted by a patrol car, Deutsche Welle reported.

“We had to explain to them why they had to go home,” Itzehoe police spokesman Peter Berndt told The Washington Post. “But in the end, they went back voluntarily.”

Festival organizers apparently loved their escapade and paid homage to the aging metalheads — without naming them — by noting on the event’s Twitter site that there’s “no discrimination” against seniors ... “because you’re never too old to rock.”